I sure hope no one is - at least not in a computer that has Internet access for then it is a threat to the rest of us and IMO, that user is not being a responsible "netizen".

That said, I still have my old XP system that simply refuses to die. So I have re-purposed it into an off-line NAS and blocked Internet access to/from it in my router. It will be completely retired soon - though it may get wiped and have Linux put on it for a learning experience for my grandson.

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

The only XP system I have seen lately was one that was powering an eye measurement apparatus. You need to have your eyes measured prior to cataract surgery. I would assume it is a standalone program. Hope so at least.

Isn't Vista in the same situation? No support. Of course much smaller user base.

Vista is inherently more secure than XP so not quite the same situation. But also, as you noted, it has a much smaller user base therefore a much smaller target on its back. There just is not that much malicious code out there for Vista and I doubt not much, if any, still being written for it.

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

Two in the house. My husband's has no internet access and he uses it to print database labels. He prefers the old 722 printer attached to it rather than the newer ones he has.
Mine runs Office 2007; I installed it to test it for my husband. He didn't like Office 2007. Mine went on the internet about once a month, if there were Office 2007 updates. Since Oct. was the end, it will no longer go on for updates.

The only XP system I have seen lately was one that was powering an eye measurement apparatus. You need to have your eyes measured prior to cataract surgery. I would assume it is a standalone program. Hope so at least.

Isn't Vista in the same situation? No support. Of course much smaller user base.

Yeah, I am running Office 2007 Pro (Pro includes Outlook) myself. I need to upgrade but am hesitant - not sure I want to spend the money, but security will soon force my hand. Deciding now if I want to get Open or Libre Office and purchase Outlook 2016, or just go all the way with Office Home and Business 2016. I have been dependent on Outlook since Outlook 97 as my email client, contacts manager, and calander/appointment scheduler - not sure I can live with something else. It sucks to get old and set in your ways and try to keep up with the times at the same time!

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

I know first hand. That's one of the reason I decided to figure out android in 2014; looking ahead to the time that none of our Windows computers will be on the internet. I wanted to see if I'd prefer to surf in linux or android.

Fortunately I gave up on a mail program years ago. So I don't have that to worry about. My Office is the Home and Student edition that came with 3 licenses. I only ever used 1 of the licenses. My husband only uses Word and Excel and my newer Samsung tablet came with them so I might pass that on to him to use in a few years.

I was wrong. I am not using pro (did with 2003). I am also using Home and Student Office 2007, plus Outlook 2007.

I use Outlook because I have 7 email accounts I still use and I get about 40 - 60 emails a day with the majority being forum notifications. I manage them with MailWasher Pro which allows me to view and process all emails from all accounts in one open window without having to individually log into each account - very handy. Then for the small handful of "keepers", I pull them down into Outlook. Works great for me. Plus, like I said, I use Outlook for all my email contacts (don't want that out in "the cloud") and Outlook yells at me when there's a birthday or doctor's appointment coming up.

That said, this thread is about XP, not Office. Didn't mean to drag it OT. Sorry about that.

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

...... It sucks to get old and set in your ways and try to keep up with the times at the same time!

I was over 70 when I switched away from MS Office, to Open Office, and a couple years older when I switched to Libre Office.
Having said that, I only use the word processor and the spreadsheet, which behave similarly to Word & Excel... The only thing I haven't figured out yet, and miss, is putting bar codes on the envelopes.

I used Outlook Express for years to cope with too many email accounts to deal with via webmail... Again, I was over 70 when I switched to Thunderbird, once you go through setting it up, the rest is easy.

The thing that took me longest (still adjusting) was going from the traditional Windows Start Menu to the Windows 8 & 10 interfaces. I still use the "Classic Shell" menu, and only use the Win 10 menu for certain tasks.

hmm, 5 at work. still have 2 users that are in the queue , couple of pc's with software issues.
better - we have a W2K pc still in use.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~C. S. Lewis

Being an old phart wasn't an insurmountable obstacle to changing mail clients.

LOL. It really never is. It is the Luddite-based resistance to change. I mean why are people still using XP? In most cases, it is not due to the budget, but rather the resistance to dumping/replacing something that is still working.

My problem is that I use Outlook for so much more than just an email client.

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

If you don't mind my asking, are the computers used to run special purpose software or hardware? Also, are they networked, and if so, are they allowed to access the Internet?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

crp, on 06 November 2017 - 10:40 PM, said:

hmm, 5 at work. still have 2 users that are in the queue , couple of pc's with software issues.
better - we have a W2K pc still in use.

The XP pc's are either severely limited in access the LAN or heavily protected against rootkits, virus and malware (to the extent that performance is hindered), not allowed for browsing the internet. There are software issues at play and one hardware issue.

The W2K is not really limited except by its own failings. I think i told the story here before , but W2K is so old that viruses and malware fail due to not finding the OS hooks. The machine does have an anti-virus and intrusion detection running.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~C. S. Lewis

Third? Wow. I tend to keep my vehicles for a long time, but at 65, I've had more than 3, 8 actually - at least as my primary vehicle. My current is a 2010 F150 I just put new tires on and hope to keep for another 7+ years.

Bill (AFE7Ret) Freedom is NOT Free! Windows and Devices for IT, 2007 - 2018Heatis the bane of all electronics!____________________________________________

At 70, my current car is a 2001 Chrysler PTCruiser. Barring an accident that destroys it completely, I will probably have it til I stop driving. It only has a bit more than 57,000 miles for the over 16 years I've owned it. I used to drive it to visit my mom who lived 48 miles away. Since she's died, I no longer make that weekly trip so I probably won't put 57,000 more miles on it for the next 16 years.

Well, I just read through that 48 page PDF! I have a love/hate opinion of it.

First, I feel it was an extremely well written, thorough and professionally produced product! That's the love part. I also did not get the impression it was written with the hidden agenda of promoting ESET products.

What I don't like is, despite the claims to the contrary, that it will be used as justification or an excuse for the remaining stubborn hold-outs to keep using XP. Because regardless how secure XP can be made today, a new vulnerability that will not be patched may come tomorrow.

I wish the following from page 38 was printed in bold, flashing, underlined, italicized, in your face, large font, and way at the very beginning as well as throughout the paper! Instead its almost as an afterthought so near the end. And context should have been added, IMO, to point out no direct access to the Internet is for everybody else's safety and security - not just XPs or that one machine. Connected infected XP systems are regularly used by the bad guys to attack the rest of us - to distribute spam and malware, or as zombies in bot armies in DDoS attacks.

Quote

Although no computer running Microsoft Windows XP should ever have
direct access to the Internet for its own safety and security

I have an XP computer from 2008 with a Geovision video camera surveillance card that was upgraded to Windows 8.1 and later Windows 10, which the software was not certified to work with, but did. Then one day after a Windows update the software no longer worked and reinstalling did not work, so it is back running XP. It runs 24/7. The network connection is turned off.

I still have multiple XP computers that were for personal use, video editing, genealogy, and office use. No reason to get rid of something that still turns on, even though they are not useful for the modern internet. Occasionally I use them to open old word processing files, genealogy files, genealogy disks, or whatever was saved on an old floppy.

Last year I used my old Windows 98 computer to run an old genealogy program that didn't like 32 bit Windows XP. Windows 98 did not communicate properly on the home network and required a little upgrading in order to get a USB stick to work so I could save some files. Sometimes the only compatible computer is an original.